This is officially an award-winning blog

HNN, Best group blog: "Witty and insightful, the Edge of the American West puts the group in group blog, with frequent contributions from an irreverent band.... Always entertaining, often enlightening, the blog features snazzy visuals—graphs, photos, videos—and zippy writing...."

The bit you quoted in the post title reminds me that when I was working in a travel bookstore, a customer asked whether we had a world atlas without the United States. Around the same time, we learned from a vendor that one of their customers had asked for a globe of the United States, which is even more awesome.